"Imagination is silly / you go 'round willy-nilly..." Harry Connick, Jr.

Weekly Web meeting. All of the sudden Rod’s concerned that our e-mail list isn’t growing fast enough.

Rod: “The number of names should be growing by 30% or so each month, and it doesn’t seem to be.”
Us: “That’s pretty ambitious. What makes you think it should be growing by that much each month?”
Rod: “Well I’m sure other companies grow their lists by that much.”

Um, why are you sure of that? Geez. Let’s work on our pulling-a-number-out-of-the-air skills, shall we? Since we have several thousand addresses on our list right now, we should have more e-mail addresses than there are Internet users within like 3 years.

Rod: “Why do we take so many addresses off of our list every month”
Us: “Some ask to be removed, some cancel or change their e-mail addresses and forget to tell us.”
Rod: “How can we get the new e-mail addresses for these people?”
Us: “If they come back and ask to be added, we’ll do so, otherwise there’s nothing we can do.”
Rod: “Can’t we track them and put them on the list ourselves?”
Me: “No. And if that were possible and some company did that to me, I would sue the SHIT out of them. Pardon my French.”
Rod: *dumfounded look*


I had a good slip later, though, that gave him another dumfounded look. We’re Tyler Gifts. Our biggest competitor is Lillian Vernon. I accidentally referred to Lillian Vernon as “Lillian Tyler.” Captain Sunshine was not happy.